McKenna on KIRO: Legal fight over the immigration executive order

KIRO 97.3 host Dave Ross asked Rob about the Trump administration’s executive order on immigration and refugees. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue a ruling later today.

Dave Ross: “Does the president have carte blanche to simply declare something a national security issue, or does he have to back that up somehow? Because that’s the other thing that Bob Ferguson, our attorney general, was mentioning. He felt that Donald Trump was using national security, invoking it, just on his say so. Can he do that?”

Rob McKenna: “Well Judge Ross, you just put your finger on the very question asked by a couple of the 9th Circuit judges. The question of whether or not the president’s power is unbounded is reminiscent of the case of Korematsu involving the internment of Japanese Americans. And it’s pretty well understood now that the Supreme Court decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans was wrong.

“There, of course, those people had rights because they were citizens or they had legal residence. And those rights contrast pretty strongly to people who don’t even have visas yet, and I think that’s where the administration’s case is probably the strongest in the federal court.”